Early adopters of the magical thinking cap: a study on do-it-yourself (DIY) transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) user community

Well done! Anita Jwa’s study of the DIY tDCS community is published. I would think this very useful to policy makers. I was only surprised by a few of her findings. Links below to full paper.

This study is the first empirical attempt to investigate the DIY tDCS user community. A questionnaire survey of DIY users, interviews with some active power users, and a content analysis of web postings on tDCS showed distinctive demographic characteristics of the DIY users, ambiguities and mistaken assumptions around the current state and future prospects of the DIY use of tDCS, mixed use of tDCS for both treatment and cognitive enhancement, the existence of an active self-regulating system in the community, and users’ demands for official guidelines and their concerns about government regulations on tDCS.

Source: Early adopters of the magical thinking cap: a study on do-it-yourself (DIY) transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) user community